Charlie Gibson's Gaffe

by Charles Krauthammer

[Gibson] asked Palin, "Do you agree with the Bush Doctrine?"

She responded, quite sensibly to a question that is ambiguous, "In what respect, Charlie?"

Sensing his "gotcha" moment, Gibson refused to tell her. After making her fish for the answer, Gibson grudgingly explained to the moose-hunting rube that the Bush doctrine "is that we have the right of anticipatory self-defense."

There is no single meaning of the Bush Doctrine. In fact, there have been four distinct meanings, each one succeeding another over the eight years of this administration -- and the one Charlie Gibson cited is not the one in common usage today. It is utterly different.

Wrong.

I know something about the subject because, as the Wikipedia entry on the Bush Doctrine notes, I was the first to use the term.